Book review: Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

I can’t believe I put reading this book off so long, but for every volume I finished in this series, someone would come along and say, “Okay, you might have liked that, but you’ll hate the next book.” They would then proceed to spoil every little detail and attempt to ruin the next book for me before I ever opened it. This required me holding off on reading until I’d forgotten most of the fine details of their complaints.

I started out just liking this series with Twilight. I identified with Bella, and I thought the first story was cute, if a bit predictable at times. It was a four star story, and I bought the other three books together, figuring “It can’t be too bad.” Well, I liked New Moon quite a bit more, and I loved Eclipse. Still, I had to wait almost a year to get to this last book, and my only complaint now is, “Why did I wait so long?”

Everything gets tied up pretty neatly here in the final volume. Bella’s special trait is explained. Rosalie chills out and becomes easier to relate to. Jacob steps out from under Sam’s control and becomes his own alpha. Leah chills out and becomes easier to relate to (Echo-cho-o) I love Renesme, and the running gag of her nickname Nessie. I loved the book’s shift to Jacob’s POV, and I loved Seth even more than the last book. I loved Bella’s first days as a vampire, and her growing acceptance that she isn’t such an ugly swan after all. I loved all the vampires, even the evil ones. (Well, I did wish someone could have smacked Casius around, but still…)

Y’all know by now that I’m a picky reader, and yet, I really don’t have any complaints about this book. It gave me closure to the series with a highly satisfying ending that I didn’t expect. I could spend many pages drawing comparisons from these vampires to others in Anne Rice books or the Whedonverse characters, but that’s got nothing to do with this story, and would involve a lot of spoilers. So I will close this out by saying I give Breaking Dawn 5 stars, and I’m so hyped after reading this last book, I plan to go back and start reading Twilight again. Count me in as a dedicated Twihard, please.